Lula Does the Hula

by Samantha Mackintosh

  ‘Just a minute,’ I called back, my voice wobbly. ‘Gotta borrow Alex’s phone.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ she said, and stepped towards me, rummaging in her bag. She pulled it out and handed it over. As soon as she was close enough I said, ‘Alex, these are bad people. Dangerous people. We’ve got to go. Now.’

  She opened her mouth to protest, her brow creased in confusion, but I kept talking. ‘Alex, you don’t know this, but Jack and I went up to Frey’s Dam after Emily Saunders went missing, and we overheard two guys talking about killing Parcel Brewster. One of them was Mickey.’

  Alex didn’t say a word. Her eyes bugged nearly all the way out of her head, and she grabbed my hand. ‘Just got to make a call, Mickey,’ she shouted down. ‘We’ll wait out here, okay?’

  But just as we turned to leave someone stepped into the loading-bay entrance, like a cowboy western villain, long thin legs astride and voice all old and raspy.

  ‘You girls won’t be calling anyone.’

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The old man I’d heard at Frey’s Dam held out his hand for Alex’s mobile. I’d already shoved it into a pocket of my cargo pants, but I reached into the pocket of my other leg and handed over my own dead phone.

  He walked over to Alex, his hand outstretched for her phone too.

  ‘M-Mr Healey?’ she stammered. I swallowed. This was Gavin’s granddad? ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Covering my tracks,’ he said grimly. ‘Wasn’t aware I’d left any. Phone, please, Alex darlin’.’

  ‘I-I don’t have mine on me. Battery died at home, so I left it charging.’

  ‘Hn,’ grunted Mr Healey. ‘Arms up and turn round. Hand me your bag.’ He searched through Alex’s bag, the goody bags and the camera bag I was holding. He took the battery out of the camera and handed it back. I felt sick thinking that he’d pat Alex down, but her close-fitting clothing left no room for a phone to hide, no matter how small. Then he examined the phone I’d given him, and laughed, a short harsh bark. ‘And this one’s dead as a doornail too. You girls . . .’ He shook his head at our stupidity. ‘Come with me.’

  We would have made a run for it – I could see the question in Alex’s eyes when she glanced at me – but when Healey pulled a brushed-steel handgun from his jacket pocket, we walked ahead of him, slowly, back down the ramp. The last of the natural light seeped away, turning my brown boots to black. I remembered with a stab of guilt that this was the footwear I’d worn up to Frey’s the night we’d found out about Parcel Brewster, the night I’d rescued Biggins. The night Jack and I had gathered evidence, tampered with an official crime scene . . .

  At the bottom of the ramp, Healey urged us through a curtain of plastic strips and into a huge basement area. Massive vats were ranged in rows along the floor, labelled with various things, but each had the danger! flammable symbol, and I got the feeling they certainly were.

  Slouching in a fold-up chair was Gavin, his back to us, laughing at something Mickey was saying.

  ‘There you are!’ he said, turning as he heard us approach. ‘Sorry, girls, I got to playing poker, and –’ Then, ‘Hey! Hello, Granddad.’

  ‘Hello yourself,’ said his grandfather. ‘We’re going to have to take care of these two.’

  I shot Alex a warning glance. Her angry spots had flared up and her eyes had gone all flashy. She returned my glance and I knew she could hear what I was thinking.

  We have a phone. We’ll be okay. Let’s keep quiet and get out of here alive.

  ‘What?’ said Gavin, still smiling. ‘What do you mean, Gramps?’

  ‘They know about us and Frey’s Dam. Get ’em in the van.’

  Gavin’s smile vanished. ‘No, Gramps. Seriously. They don’t.’ He put a grin on his face again and jutted his chin. ‘My Gramps,’ he laughed, winking at Alex. ‘Always taking the mick.’

  ‘In the van. Now.’

  Gavin stood hurriedly.

  Oh boy. No arguing with Gramps.

  Alex and I were bundled into the back of Gavin’s van, though there wasn’t much room in there amid ten huge barrels of hazardous materials. I flinched as the doors slammed shut and our world went dark.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I whispered, at exactly the same time as Alex hissed, ‘The phone!’

  I pulled it out of my pocket and hit the contacts menu. A pale glow lit up my friend’s face, pinched and scared, but I concentrated on one name only:

  Jack de Souza.

  I found it, hit call, then held it to my ear. ‘You wanna speak to him?’ I asked suddenly, holding the phone out to my friend.

  She shook her head vehemently. ‘I have no idea what’s going on!’ she hissed. ‘Get Jack to get us out of here, then we’re going to have a talk, Tatty Lula!’

  Uh-oh, I thought, just as the van rumbled to life and Jack answered the phone.

  ‘Hey, cuz,’ he said. I could barely hear his voice over the roar of the engine.

  ‘Jack!’ I bleated. ‘It’s me, Lula. Alex and I have been locked in a van heading towards the North Road by those men we saw that night at Frey’s.’

  There was cursing and a loud squealing sound. Could have been Mona, could have been tyres on tarmac – difficult to say with all the engine noise on my side.

  ‘Lula? Lula?’

  ‘Calm down, Jack! What are you doing? Who’s screaming?’

  ‘Forget that. Where are you?’

  ‘I only know we’re moving out from Cleo Cosmetics. We’ll hit North Road for sure, but then I don’t know which way we’ll go.’ My voice wobbled a little and Alex grabbed my knees in both her hands and squeezed reassuringly. I couldn’t meet her eyes. What had I got us into?

  ‘How? Where? Who? Who, Lula? Who are they?’

  ‘Michael Healey and Granddad Healey,’ I said clearly.

  ‘Granddad Healey? Granddad Healey? Come on, Lula!’ urged Jack.

  Alex, pressed close to me, murmured, ‘James. James Healey.’

  I relayed the information, explaining these guys were related to Gavin, Alex’s hot new boyfriend, and part of Healey’s Expert Disposal, Gavin’s granddad’s company.

  ‘Sheesh!’ It fell into place for Jack as quickly as it had for me. ‘The parabens and ethanols Forest found in the water samples! They’re from cosmetics! They’ve been dumping Cleo’s toxic waste at Frey’s and I bet Parcel saw them!’

  Alex gasped and snatched the phone from me. ‘Emily Saunders!’ she cried into the phone. ‘She was up there that night too! Do you think they –’

  My mouth went dry. ‘No . . .’

  Before Alex could comment the van rumbled to a halt, then turned left.

  ‘We’re heading back towards Hambledon.’ Alex’s voice was calm, but her grip on my knee had reached painful proportions.

  Jack’s voice was small and tinny. ‘Tell me everything you know about the Healeys, Al.’

  ‘We don’t have time for this!’ Alex hiccupped and a tear slipped down her cheek. ‘You’ve got to get on to Sergeant T, Jack! Please!’

  ‘I’m not letting you go till you’ve got some idea of where you are!’

  ‘But you’re wasting time! Sergeant T could be sending people back up North Road towards us as we speak!’

  ‘Just tell me where their premises are. Where they live. I’m on my way back to you right now. I’ll get there faster than any police.’

  Alex sobbed, and I took the phone from her.

  ‘Gavin Healey lives up near Stone’s Hill, but the only other place I know of is a boathouse his grandfather owns at Saddler’s Pond. We’re heading in that direction, but I’m sure they can’t be –’

  ‘Thanks, Lula. You don’t know where James Healey lives? The other guy? What about business premises?’

  Alex took a deep breath and explained that the warehouse for Healey’s Expert Disposal was about ten miles west on the coast road, but other than that, she knew nothing.

  ‘We can’t be going to their warehouse,’ I said to Jack.

  ‘Because you’
re going south on the North Road,’ agreed Jack.

  ‘So that leaves Gavin’s house or –’

  ‘Saddler’s Pond.’

  ‘Get Sergeant T,’ I begged. ‘Quickly.’ Thoughts of leopards and drownings and toxic-waste spillage were crowding my already crowded head, and I felt myself close to tears.

  We hung up. I turned the phone to silent and clicked through to Google Maps.

  ‘Alex,’ I said urgently. ‘How does this thing work exactly?’

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Trapped

  Having something to do calmed my friend. She pushed the tears from her face with the backs of her hands and blew her nose on a patchouli-scented tissue from a handipack she’d found in her goody bag. But by the time she’d loaded up our exact location, I already knew where we were.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ whispered Alex, staring intently at the screen of her phone. ‘Hurry up, hurry up . . .’ she murmured.

  How could I not know? We were travelling a route I’d been enduring twice a day for the last ten days.

  From North Road we took another turn, about fifteen minutes out, this time to the right, on to dirt. A pause. A familiar voice asking for a sign-in, and we were off again.

  ‘That was the checkpoint at Saddler’s Pond,’ I hissed to Alex.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered back. ‘They are! They’re taking us to the boathouse! They’re going to drown us!’ She made a little sound at the back of her mouth, like, ‘eemph’ and it made those digesting Maltesers want to head straight for the nearest exit, because, even though she’d been crying, Alex was a much braver girl than me.

  ‘Jack will send Sergeant T,’ I whispered. ‘He will. He really, really will!’

  Alex nodded, and we both knew we just had to think about that and nothing else, or we’d be doing a Diggle.

  A few minutes later the van came to a stop and the back doors crashed open. Mickey grabbed Alex, and Gavin got hold of my arm. It was dark now, the night cool and clear. It was obvious Gavin thought I was the cause of all this, because he yanked me out with more force than necessary. I reckoned he’d been given a bollocking of epic proportions for being the reason two girls had stumbled upon their dirty little secret. I was glad I was wearing my boots, and no silly wedges, or I’d have broken my ankle. You could drop Alex Thompson from the moon in stilettos and she’d still land elegantly upright.

  ‘Here’s hoping neither of you are claustrophobic,’ said Healey Senior, and he dropped his cigarette butt on the ground, and started heading for a huge, sleek building on the shores of the lake. This was no boathouse. Half hidden behind dense foliage, the building looked like something from the future. It seemed to be made of a strange composite metal and hugged the ground, just three metres in height, and I had no idea how long. Painted a dark matt slate colour, it was pretty much invisible at night, and I imagined was perfectly camouflaged in the day. The structure of it was entirely seemless. No windows as far as I could see, and no doors.

  Then Healey Senior pressed a button on a remote in his pocket and an entire area just slid away.

  Once the doors were completely open, Healey gestured us all inside. I caught a glimpse of a powerboat in the shadows before we were shuffled towards a hole in the floor.

  No, not a hole. A stairwell. Going down. Just as I was about to panic, lights fizzed on, and Healey barked at Gavin to move out of the way of the sensor so he could shut the doors.

  ‘Don’t need any nosy neighbours spotting activity out here tonight, do we, boyo?’ he asked. ‘You stay here. We’ll be back in a sec.’

  ‘Er,’ started Gavin. ‘Granddad, just because they know about the dumping doesn’t mea–’

  ‘Quiet, boy!’ barked Mickey. ‘Who said anything about the dumping?’

  ‘But you said they knew about the barrel leaking into Frey’s Dam! I think we should . . . What are you –’

  ‘That’s enough, that’s enough,’ said Healey hastily, his eyes flicking to us and then away.

  I was frozen in place. So it’s true. They’ve been dumping toxins, and there’d been a leak, and Parcel had seen it, and maybe Emily too, and now here we are . . .

  My heart began to pound, and sweat prickled across my skin.

  ‘Don’t worry, Gav,’ continued Healey. ‘Leave it to us, eh? Everything’s going to be fine.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Gavin warily. ‘Okay, Granddad.’

  Okay? I thought wildly. Are you out of your mind? Your gramps is taking two girls down into the bowels of the earth, a gun to their heads, and you think this is OKAY?

  My body tensed, and I would have done something stupid for sure, but Alex nudged me gently in the small of my back, quietly saying, ‘Lula . . .’

  Mickey giggled, making goosebumps scatter across my skin. ‘Come on, Lula,’ he crooned. ‘We just want a little chat, like.’ He grabbed my forearm in a painful grip and pulled me towards the gaping stairwell.

  A little chat. Sure.

  I resisted and Mickey’s mouth curved into a yellowtoothed grin of delight. He glanced back at Healey and cocked an eyebrow. I tried to move along quietly, I really did, but my heart was drumming like mad, and my blood was up. Way up. Then an image of Jack flashed into my head. Him racing along the roads towards us, Mona on the phone to Sergeant T beside him, squealing occasionally at the twists and turns taken at high speed. The wild panicked urge to kick the bad people in their groins passed, and I took a hesitant step forward.

  Mickey’s grin faded.

  Down we went, a good way below the surface of the earth, with spotlights overhead casting deep shadows at our feet. The stairwell seemed to narrow the further we descended, and our footsteps echoed eerily.

  ‘It smells down here,’ I whispered to Alex. ‘Like when the birds died at Frey’s.’

  ‘Quiet!’ barked Healey. ‘You can talk all you like in the fuse room.’

  At the bottom we came to a metal door, snug in its solid concrete surround. Healey slipped a key-lock access card into a rectangle on the wall. It winked at us and bleeped. He punched in a code and leaned on a huge steel bar handle. It grated in protest and then the door swung open into total darkness.

  While Mickey pushed us forward, Healey reached for the light switch on the outside, and clicked it on. A glass box on the wall inside above the door whirred to life and a green glow fizzed into the room. Along the left was a steel workbench, with wires and tools and bits and pieces on it. On the other side was a single mattress, and curled up on it the still figure of a young girl.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  How do you describe a feeling of fear and anger and horror so intense that it renders you motionless? If I thought I’d been afraid before, I’d been wrong. Mickey stepped over to the girl and felt her neck for a pulse.

  ‘Geez,’ he said to Healey. ‘Still going. Faster than ever.’

  ‘Fast is good. Not long now,’ said Healey. ‘Let’s lock ’em in. They got their bags? We don’t want any more mistakes. Everything together.’

  Without another word, he’d shoved us both right the way in, flicked the light switch off and slammed the door.

  ‘WAIT!’ I yelled. ‘You can’t just leave us here!’

  Mickey’s voice came lilting through the air grille at the bottom. ‘It’s for the best, girlies. You get a peaceful departure, and we get to dump your sorry dead asses in Morgan’s Bay.’

  ‘Quiet, Michael,’ ordered Healey. ‘That’s enough. Less said, understand?’

  Alex grabbed my arm, and I didn’t need to see her face to know the expression on it. Dropping to our knees, ears to the air grille, we heard Gavin call from the top of the stairs, ‘Granddad?’ His voice was quavery. ‘I-I . . .’

  ‘I-I nothing, son,’ replied his grandfather. ‘These girls just need a little quiet time.’ His voice faded as they clomped up the stairs. ‘Don’t worry, they just need to realise that nosing about where they’re not wanted leads to . . .’

  The faint light coming through the grille at
the bottom was extinguished and Alex grabbed my arm again. ‘We’re gonna die!’ she hissed.

  ‘No,’ I said firmly, ‘but it looks like Emily Saunders might.’

  Morgan’s Bay was the stuff of legend in the halls of Hambledon High. You could only get to it by sea, surrounded as it was by sheer cliffs that reached high on all three sides. It was a big stretch of sand, beautiful, but those clifftops were treacherous and locals had long lobbied to get it fenced off. Every now and again a silly nutter would try to climb down. If they made it to the sand by some miracle, there was no getting out, unless by boat. Two people had died there in recent history, of dehydration mainly, trapped by the high sandy cliffs and the undrinkable salty water.

  The corpse of a runaway girl found in Morgan’s Bay, dead of dehydration, would arouse no suspicion, though plenty publicity. But three of us? Surely that was pushing it a bit far.

  I reached for the phone in my trouser pocket and pressed a button. The screen light came on – no reception, obviously – and we could see the girl curled up in the corner. Yes. Emily, definitely. Alex hurried over, rummaging in her goody bag.

  ‘Emily,’ she said quietly, ‘Emily. You okay?’

  There was no response from Emily. Looking around the room by the light from the phone it was obvious there were no regular meals going on here.

  ‘Maybe . . . Maybe they just left her here. Literally,’ I ventured.

  Alex’s voice was uncertain. ‘To . . . to die?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘No,’ whispered my friend. ‘No way. Gavin’s ridiculous, but he’s not bad . . . is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think Gavin knows about Parcel Brewster. I think Gavin has just been aiding and abetting his grandfather in dumping hazmat at Frey’s Dam. Y’know, from what he was saying up there? What do you think? Forest found parabens, ethanol and mercury in the water. Those are all used in cosmetic products. No one would know, because the barrels would stay hidden underwater, but if one of them leaked . . . If Parcel saw them damage a barrel . . .’